Further ramblings of a self-made pauper

We have just scoffed cheese strings by way of reward for cleaning the bedroom and hoovering the stairs and landings. I haven't the energy to do the computer room right now - that needs some sorting out and I have decided to wait until the PC is fixed and blitz the whole kit and keboodle in a single flurry of sustained activity. Maybe next week, if I can get the PC fixed by then.

Dust bunnies quail: you are on notice.

I reckon I might hit the living room with the hoover tomorrow when I get back from work for games night. Right now I am just a little too hot and bothered, so there.

I have decided to make a concerted effort to get back to my hobbies, which have been sadly neglected for some time. That means more attempts to get stuff written, more drawing and/or painting (let's face it, there could hardly have been less over the past few years) and to finish off a couple of half-built and painted models I have floating around the place.

I think that need to rearrange the computer room a little so that Miss Furtle and I can use it at the same time when everything is sorted out properly. In particular I want to move the PC an desk to a different wall so that I can use it when the morning sun is shining through the window (more of a problem in the summer, it has to be admitted; maybe I should get some curtains up!). This all means a fair amount of thought and shifting of stuff to get the best use out of the space available. In particular I want to shift the table so the light comes in from the side rather than from in front of me while I am sitting at it.

A project, then. Blimey.

Back at the Athenaeum Club and it's probably time I turned the radiator back on. The mild spell has disappeared in a splash of mid-winter caprice, and my observation that central heating made The Tower too hot was probably a little premature. The old tootsies are a little chilly (putting socks on would help, but what's a lazy bloke to do?).

I got back from Yule in Foxton yesterday, about five-ish to find an already returned Beastie in the middle of a rather uncharacteristic bout of tidying up. My first inclination was to apologise for the intrusion and go back out on to the street and go to the proper house, but that passed.

My return was a little earlier in the day than I originally intended, spurred on by the severe weather warning issued by the Met Office. Three millimetres of snow and a partial thaw later, I am wondering quite what the urgency was; I've spilt talc deeper than the snow we've had, and over a wider area. Doubtless Niclas, the co-Godfather of my God Daughter with whom we all spent Christmas, is wondering if it was all some kind of bizarre practical joke as he prepares to travel back to Stockholm today. Still, they get several metres of the stuff every year. We may get a foot or so every twenty, so I'd be a bit miffed if the council spent a fortune on snow-clearing equipment which will still only have 500 miles on the clock in thirty years time.

A little later on I am going down into Finchley to try and get hold of a drawing board and some decent pencils. I have found that I cannot get on with drawing flat on the table, I have got used to shifting the picture around to strange angles while I draw to make life easier. A table is a little big for such shenanigans, though indispensable in other ways. I have several sets of drawing pencils, but I'm damned if I can find them just when I want them, so it's time to acquire more. They're not expensive. I'm not sure my small supply of sugar paper survived the move from Clapham, but I still have several pads of cartridge paper, so that will do until I get down the West End next where I can get supplies from Cass Arts or the London Graphic Centre. Probably the former, as the latter seem to be convinced that true art can only be produced through poverty and charge prices designed to ensure the continuance of the would-be artist's bohemian living conditions. They do have a cracking selection of stuff, though, and I still haven't acquired the Japanese calligraphy brush I'm after, so...

Right, that's it for now. I've just had an email from ebay telling me that someone has outbid me on the Lennon-style shades I was after. Judging by the price they've bid, I imagine that they must think they're buying a pair worn by the man himself. Good luck to them; I'll search for a cheaper set.

Later, kids.